New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: The real fascinating case, then, is the Montgomery County EITC. Because most local governments do not have their own income tax, a local EITC program seems impractical. But Montgomery County has gotten around this problem by piggybacking off of Maryland’s state EITC program. When a Montgomery County resident receives… Continue reading Policy Shop: Transferring Cash to Poor People at the Local Level
TM Scanlon is wrong about in-kind benefits and you might be too
My prior post was about cash transfers versus in-kind benefits. In the twitter thread which motivated that post, I noticed Mike Konczal linking back to a TM Scanlon argument on his old WordPress site on the issue. I am pretty sure Mike and I have had this argument out in a comment section somewhere before,… Continue reading TM Scanlon is wrong about in-kind benefits and you might be too
A way to think about in-kind benefits and cash transfers
Evan Soltas asked a question on Twitter regarding whether in-kind benefits (things like government-provided health insurance and food stamps) are better than cash benefits. There are all sorts of arguments about this. Konczal even tried his hand a general theory of this question a while back, which met mixed reception. I think this question tends… Continue reading A way to think about in-kind benefits and cash transfers
On process and scarcity
Occasionally I’ve weighed in here on the process versus substance debate, generally on the side of substance. My partiality towards substance is not based simply on some assessment that it is more important than process. It’s more that, after years of effort trying to work on theories of process, it became clear that process was… Continue reading On process and scarcity
The response to the McDonalds budget
So McDonalds put out a sample budget for low-income people to live on. The budget has been relentlessly mocked since then. In response to that mocking, Timothy B. Lee authored a post today over at Wonkblog titled “That McDonald’s budget people are making fun of isn’t cruel. It’s realistic.” Lee then goes through the budget… Continue reading The response to the McDonalds budget